OUROBOROS, 1994

The eternal circle which is devided and again becomes whole, a symbol chosen by Ruudt Peters as the title for his series of hand jewellery, This hand jewellery – logically termed rings by Peters – must literally be carried, not worn grasped between two fingers, one part of it lying in the palm, the other at the back of the hand. They are not rings with a hole, with symbolize a circular endless time, but merely a pint of contact, a fragment of the endless, mysterious point of contact, where the found raw mineral and the metal worked by the homo faber meet each other, or where nature meets culture, or history encounters the present. More cover, the objects have been given a protective layer of, for instance, red lead or precious metal, which helps preserve this piece of our cultural inheritance to be, but at the same time hides its true nature from the eye. For the most part, Ruudt Peters jewellery is closed, inward looking, It is the materialization of a personal vision of the world that does not give up its sectrets just like that, instead sharing much with the way in wich a sacred object must convey its spirituality to its posesor, By bearing this rings, by living with them, the bearers history, his or her existence in time, is conveyed to the object. The object physically and spiritually charged by its maker. The faith in and promise of beauty that is hidden within it, with the passage of time, will be confirmed and redeemed

Jan Hein Sassen

Installation OUROBOROS

Interview by Kelly Riggs

R.P. Have you heard about out my ladder show? What did you hear about the ladder show? [laughter]

K.R. I heard that you wanted to display the pieces very high and you had these ladders put up and so the exhibition became this social experiment to see whether people would climb the ladders to look at the pieces, or who wouldn’t, and it’s this very sort of wonderful example of relational aesthetics; the work isn’t the object, the work is this test to see whether someone will engage themselves, and this never happens in our field and it’s a beautiful thing.

R.P. Yeah. The ladders was the most stupid show I ever did. No one was going up… I forgot that my audience is always ladies above 50 and they never walk up onto a ladder. No one saw the show. They didn’t walk on the ladders! They didn’t want to go.

K.R. And so I related that show as an experience to the weight the word jewelry itself, and what it carries with it, sometimes inaccessible, a precious thing. It’s like you utilized this moment of knowing it wasn’t going to be easy to for them, it wasn’t just a simple mistake of you putting up the ladders

R.P.It was not a simple mistake; In terms of philosophy it was the right thing to do. The real thing in Ouroboros was the upper and the under worlds, the upper and the under. So climbing up, you have to present the work between the beams and that people had to climb up, that was the only solution.

K.R. You know I think you should redo the show. Somewhere else, where everyone is much younger…

R.P. Yeah well yeah maybe, because well the show was only one week and then we broke it down and did something else.I can tell you something about these shows that is really very interesting. I made some exhibitions, Interno with the boys and the big applause, and then Passio, and then Ouroboros came. And with Ouroboros - mostly at the openings they like it and ohh it’s interesting, but there, no one had seen it, that’s one, and secondly, no one understood it, zero. But after, and this is the great thing you know so you can’t redo it, it’s a timeframe thing. At that moment, 1994 and doing this, is something very great. I had just come back from India, all this stuff, dirty, fingers…. but the people only knew from me only beautiful bright things, shiny aesthetics. But then after three or four weeks, I got postcards, written texts of what they were thinking about the exhibition and that they started to understand. And that is what I wanted to say, when I’m working on my own, two years with a body of work, how can I expect the people who are coming into the exhibition, in two minutes are following my thoughts?

K.R. It’s not coming easy to the viewer, one has to show they’re invested and be overwhelmed even to have access to it, right?

R.P. It’s too easy to get it directly. And all the work is never in the showcases and the fact of doing this is that I create distance and respect. So the distance is that maybe you’re overwhelmed by the installation so that you get the distance, so then you come closer, but then you keep respecting, you don’t start to drape it, you don’t start to take it or put it on your body, no because the whole thing is an interaction, to meet each other in the middle.